Robocalls court case meant to discredit Conservatives, lawyer argues

OTTAWA — A left-of-centre advocacy group brought legal challenges against the election of six Conservative MPs in order to erode the party’s brand and advance an “anti-Harper agenda,” the MPs’ lawyer told the Federal Court Monday.

Lawyer Arthur Hamilton says the Council of Canadians is the true litigant behind the six legal challenges, which claim the election results were changed because of misleading live and robocalls the applicants say they received in the last election.

Hamilton wants the court to toss out the six cases based on the legal prohibition against “champerty and maintenance” – trying to benefit from someone else’s lawsuit.

“There are simply too many pieces of evidence which point to the fact that the Council of Canadians is the real applicant here,” Hamilton told the court.

Hamilton said the group went out and actively solicited for applicants to file the challenges.

The council, he said, decided, “This fits our narrative of sinking the Harper agenda so let’s go find some applicants and we’ll get the ball rolling.”

He also targeted the applicant’s lawyer, Steven Shrybman, who is a council board member. When Elections Canada’s budget was cut earlier this year, after the robocalls investigation had become public, Shrybman had commented on Twitter, “It’s payback time.”

Hamilton extrapolated that tweet to the six cases, telling the court, “For Mr. Shrybman, it’s payback time. And those are his own words.”

Hamilton’s arguments on the champerty and maintenance motion came at the beginning of a week of hearings into the election challenges, which seek to set aside the results in six federal ridings, all won by Conservatives.

In order to prove champerty, however, Hamilton must convince the court that the Council of Canadians stood to benefit from the lawsuits. Judge Richard Mosley challenged him on this point, asking what financial benefit the council stood to gain.

Hamilton said the council was able to fundraise and collect a long list of donors but, moreover, stood to gain politically because the organization has a long history of opposition to the Conservative government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The group has already scored a victory by keeping the story about the cases in the news for nine months since news of Elections Canada’s investigation of misleading calls first emerged, thereby eroding the Conservative brand, Hamilton said.

“This has been going for nine months. There has been no end of public discourse. Pro. Con. Ridiculous. Not ridiculous. Throughout the media, this is commonplace in the parlance of current Canadian politics. That is its own victory for those that wish to oppose the government of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives,” Hamilton told the court.

“Just the fact this is being talked about to the extent that it is, can erode the credibility or erode the brand, which is Prime Minister Harper or the Conservative party; that’s its own victory, and the final outcome is of no moment.”

Hamilton also pointed out that applicants all took the position that the 30-day time limit on bringing election challenges all used the date of Feb. 23 – the date of the first Postmedia News/Ottawa Citizen report on the robocalls issue.

This shows that the Council of Canadians was actually calling the shots on the litigation, Hamilton argued.

The applicants will respond to the champerty and maintenance motion later today.